2-year nuclear plant warranty worrying

  • 2012-08-22
  • From wire reports

VILNIUS - Lithuanian Parliament Speaker Irena Degutiene at the annual meeting of parliamentary speakers of the Nordic and Baltic countries (NB8) in Finland on Aug. 16 invited other counties to cooperate more closely as of now to prevent the development of potentially unsafe nuclear projects in the European Union (EU) neighborhood, reports ELTA.
“A lack of the international community’s attention gives way to constructing unsafe nuclear power plants (NPP) at the EU borders. Therefore, the EU must find a recipe for how to encourage neighboring countries to cooperate more closely when it comes to nuclear safety issues. One such measure could be considering a restriction on importing electricity from third countries if neighboring countries fail to comply with international nuclear safety standards,” she said.
“Nuclear safety standards cannot be exclusively American, European, Japanese or Russian. They are universal,” Degutiene stressed.

The Lithuanian parliament speaker also named several reasons why the projected NPPs in the Kaliningrad region and Belarus could threaten the safety of the entire region. “Neither Russia nor Belarus have submitted environmental impact assessments that concern their future plants. The currently ongoing correspondence by Lithuania and the two countries on the environmental impact assessment can be viewed as a waste of time, as we are not receiving any answers (..) both plants will be built by the state-owned Russian company Rosatom. The Russian company plans to use a new type of reactor, which so far has not been put into practice,” Degutiene said.

“I am also worried about the reports that Russia will be responsible for safety at the Belarusian NPP. Russia’s Rosatom speaks about only a 2 year warranty for the Belarusian NPP, as it was some kind of a refrigerator or a TV set,” she said.